BS

With brute force he reaches his hand deep into the earth. Down and down and down he digs, pulling his hand out occasionally to marvel at this rock or that bottlecap. Down and down and down he digs, searching for the center.

He loves roots.

Hailing

Frenetic-ley and somewhat afraid-ley, moving into the light just a little bit--the only one in the room uncomfortable in the light, not because of anything that the light is, but because of what the light shows. She steals the puzzled looks from others' faces and saves them in a box until she can fit them together.

It starts raining and she sits down to feel the ground.

Spoils

I picked a flower for you
on my way home from the war
and I walked and I walked
with the flower in my hand
and you didn't notice it
so I left it on the floor.

I Dream of You Coming Back Every Night Since the Morning You Left or Window in a Cheap Apartment Building

I was a hot mess
the morning you left
and the chill of the morning
crept in through the door
and the music was still playing
soft guitar
and piano
and heavy-handed metaphor
and I felt like I'd been there before
the déjà vu made me shiver
or was that a draft from the window?
I'll never know.

Sob

I mean to say I am, I mean, to say I am, I mean to say I am man of woman of love of man and woman of man and woman and love of man and woman and I mean to say I am mean man to woman's means of love of man of man and woman and, say, woman to man's means, am I to say I mean I am man or merely means?

Huck it All

The only way to leave Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with a sense of satisfaction is to know exactly what you are getting yourself into and then read it from cover to cover. Otherwise, the book seems to be ridden with shortcomings and oddities. The book is not perfect by any means. Twain would probably be the first to say that. But what it tries to do, it does well. It successfully navigates the tumultuous and treacherous path that a writer must take, that gap of water over rock and silt and mud where “you can't tell the shape of the river, and you can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then along comes a steamboat up the river” (131). And just out through the fog the whole damned country is burning down so that all you hear are boat horns and screams masked with fife and drum. These sounds, though, can't be covered with triumphant music. They're sounds that drop through your body like a rock through water, breaking not just the meniscus but every layer they encounter until they make ripples in the marrow of your bones. You start shivering and a rivulet of sweat, disguised as a tear, beads on your bottom lip. That’s when you realize you’re about to miss the chance to do something remarkably different. Lucky for us, Twain, through Huck, knew just what he was doing: "I dived—and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel had got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room" (131).

Two Steps Forward, One Step Left

Burning through life with a voracious mix of passions and an earnest compassion for those around him, he doesn't test the waters, he drinks them down and chases them with breathfuls of Northbird.

In a deep V-neck he hugs you, shakes your hand, pats your chest, wrestles the ball from your kung-fu grip, orders you a pizza, turns the light off and leaves his music on.

One mile later, two years after, three beers down, four bowls in, five assists, six points, seven rebounds, eight takedowns, nine knockouts, ten Japanese crab kills, twelve step program, sixteen chess pieces and though two are knights, only ours is Knight.